Saturday, September 27, 2008

SocialSpark has been good to me when it was still new, but lately I'm having problems with its service. I'm not talking about difficulties getting opportunities since it is expected as more and more users sign up. I could use more opps that offers more than $5 though. Hehehe.

These are what I'm complaining about:

Sudden change in requirements. I stay out of opps that requires US bloggers since I'm not one. However, I experienced writing for an opp that I knew doesn't have the US blogger only requirement. But after a few weeks while waiting for approval, I got a message from them that the opp is for US bloggers only so my post was rejected.

Sudden change in price. It's expected that prices fluctuate depending on the number of takers of the opp. But there's this opp where I was able to get a reservation for $14 (I still have the e-mail). But when I visited the opp after receiving their e-mail, it states that it's price is only $5. I didn't bother continuing with it since the post is complicated and IMHO is not worth $5.

Poor decision by post approvers. As most of you know, most of my posts here are about other cool and helpful sites out there. These are not paid posts. However, SS won't approve my Giant Obama Sticker post because they said that the posts before and after it are paid post. How would they know? They are not paid posts, I found those sites from Lifehacker.

No reply from submitted tickets and e-mail. Of course I e-mailed them about these twice last week and also submitted a ticket as well. Till now, I still haven't heard from them. I know they got my ticket since I got the automated reply.

So that's what's bothering me regarding SS. Are you a SocialSparker too? Encountering any problems with them?

6 comments:

I also took US opps months ago, and after their manual check I got disapproved. Now I don't get US opps already, even if I got those reservations.

You should have pursued the $14 opp. That bid price when you applied for it is actually the one that they will be paying you, not the displayed $5 that is presently offered. Fluctuations happen when there is an absence of bidders. Think of it like the lotto situation: jackpot price goes up when nobody wins the jackpot price.

I think they mistook the one with the LifeHacker, but it is always best to reply and explain that these are not paid posts. I've often interacted with Customer Love and I had no problems at all.

And the tickets? Perhaps they might be busy with the blog audit; they are trying to remove low quality blogs right now. I also submitted a ticket this week because I could not submit my recent SS opp due to a new domain. I have observed that CL is offline Saturdays and Sundays US time.